VISU2061: Designing for Digital Culture

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• To develop students' appreciation of the relationship between technology and different modes of aesthetic experience.
• To develop students' understanding of the specificities of digital technology and the digital revolution, and to bring them to reflect critically on the full ethical dimensional spectrum of this technology.
• To develop students' understanding of digital methods for visual culture research, and enable them to situate these methodologies within broader debates about the impact of the digital.
• To develop their technical skills in deploying digital methods alongside their appreciation of need for responsibility in the uses of technology.
• To develop their ability to design research projects that can be addressed by digital methods, and which might provide alternatives to currently dominant modes of recourse to the digital.

• The module will begin with a contextualised theoretical overview of what exactly is meant by 'the digital', and how digital technologies differ from earlier forms of technical systems.
• Early classes will typically focus on core concepts in digital technology (for instance, digital objects, metadata, algorithms, artificial intelligence) and their broader social import, including how they are involved in the creation of digital experience.
• Subsequent sessions will be more practical in orientation, focusing on training students in the use of digital techniques. These may include, but need not be limited to: platform design; game and UI development; LLM and generative AI; digital filmmaking; 3-D scanning and printing; use of eye-tracking software..
• Throughout, development of technical and practical skills in these areas will go hand in hand with theoretical reflection on the uses of the digital, and awareness of the potential of digital methods both to expand and contract thought and experience.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Have theoretical knowledge of both digital technology and its transformations of culture.
• Have practical skills in the use of digital tools for knowledge-creation and aesthetic experience.
• Understand the potential for digital methods both to close down and open up new avenues of research and experience.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Theoretical skills in analysing the relationship between technology and experience;
• Practical skills in various aspects of digital knowledge-creation.
• The ability to formulate visual culture-related research projects that require effective use of digital methods.
• The ability to apply digital methods to address specific problems or questions in visual culture research.
• The ability to articulate the benefits and limitations of digital methods for visual culture research.

Key Skills:

• Research project design
• Digital presentational skills
• Independent research
• Creativity and visual methods
• Organisation
• Time management
• Teamwork

• The blended learning will develop both theoretical and practical knowledge of the relevant hardware and software, and allow discussion and development of research projects.
• Assessment will be by means of a presentation and two research projects, designed to immerse students in debates concerning the relationship between digital technology and society, theory and practice. Summative submissions will demonstrate a combination of digital skills and theoretical reflection on digital culture research questions, while also inviting students to reflect on the processes of digital experience and knowledge-creation.
• In any one year, one of the following modes of assessment will be in place for the second research project:
• A)1,250 words and wire frame website OR functional website and 750 words
• B)1,000 word design proposal plus annotated UI mock-up and moodboard
• C)5-minute scripted documentary film

The skills-based and interactive nature of the module means that there will be a constant process of feedback, both at the level of skills development and at the level of research project design.

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